Your energy is your power. When your energy is gathered, like drops of water in a river, its power is amplified. You choose to give your energy to the people you love, the causes you support, the work that allows you to live. And at times you may find yourself feeling unfocused or drained.

Imbalances of energy exchange are energy leaks. They occur when you work or live with an energy vampire. When you are helping ground someone who is ungrounded. When you have been programmed to believe that your power is too much. When you chronically give more than you receive. When you are raised to not have permission to say no.

If you are dealing with someone who always wants more from you. They don’t know how to regenerate their own energy so they hook into the energy of others. At work this could be a manager that sets unreasonable deadlines, creates destabilizing drama or micro-managing busywork. At home this may be a family member who always has demands, is angry or interrupts what you are doing to make you focus on their agenda. They may play victim or use guilt to hook you and use your energy.

“Energy is the driving force for the universe… One form of energy can be transferred to another form.” Scientific Principles

This science is true for human energy as well as energy held in the earth elements. You have the opportunity to focus the transfer of your energy in a way that is fulfilling by shoring up your energy leaks. As you become conscious of how your energy is being used you can stop the leaks and create more balanced energy exchanges.

The most effective way to stop energy leaks is regularly practicing Active Meditation (more info). In this practice you visualize your energy field (aura), reset your chakras, create a new grounding cord and call your energy back to yourself (video example). Defining what is you and what is not you, energetically through this process, is key to dissolving the hooks from energy vampires too. When you own all of your energy, by being aware of how you are sharing it in the world, it is harder for people to take it from you without your agreement.

Your energy is your power. It took you a lifetime to develop how you share your energy, so be patient with the time it takes to break the habits that lead to energy leaks. Each energy leak you stop gives you more focus and fulfillment in your life.

Who taught you what boundaries were allowed or expected? It’s not a subject taught in kindergarten or elementary school. Boundaries are demonstrated socially. They are both subtle and exacting.

The greatest cause of suffering I see in sensitive people originated from a lack of clear boundaries.

Your parents may have told you “no,” punished, shamed or discouraged you from activities that made them feel uncomfortable, crossed their boundaries. They may have had no boundaries or a lot or rules about touch, words, privacy, food, allowed emotions, money, how to dress, nudity, topics of conversation, personal space, time, performance at school, in sports or work.

The rules you learned at home may not have worked at school or with your friends who had different boundaries.

You need healthy boundaries. When another person shows you their boundaries you know how to relate with them. They create a clear container for understanding your world.

When the adults around you growing up don’t have boundaries, don’t honor your boundaries or change the rules frequently, it creates a state of heightened alert. The good news is that you likely have stronger than average intuition. The bad news is you have it because you didn’t feel safe and had to intuitively read the world around you all the time, to navigate the shifting boundaries.

Intuitively tracking those around you all the time is exhausting and confusing. It’s exhausting because you don’t get to relax into a sense of safety. It’s confusing because often the energy or feelings you sense in those around you gets misinterpreted as your own experience. Keeping your psychic antenna open all the time blurs the boundaries.

For example, you work at an office and have a passive aggressive co-worker. You find yourself feeling angry a lot but can’t say why. When you leave work, the anger subsides. Because you are immersed in their energy with no boundaries it feels like your own anger. Reading the mood of those around you is a skill learned in order to camouflage and create a safe space in an environment with unpredictable boundaries.

As child in an environment of unclear or absent boundaries reading others to protect yourself and prevent harm is essential to survival. But to read someone this way is to get in their psychic space. Over time this survival skill creates suffering because you feel everything around you. So how do you learn to reset your psychic boundaries?

Resetting your boundaries so intuition can work for you rather then against you requires consciously owning your energy field on a regular basis. Practicing simple active meditation tools is what works for me. A series of visualizations that create healthy energy boundaries can be applied on a walk or in a conference room. In the simplest form, you notice your grounding cord, set your aura bubble, put up protection roses and call your energy back to yourself.

To feel more of you and less of those around you isn’t hard-hearted. You still have compassion and can even help others more when you aren’t matching their emotional state.

What are your dreams, your heart’s desires? are they current? have they been trampled on? do they need to be updated or let go to make room for a new vision? What you want to create and experience in your life maybe a deep inner-secret, or something you’ve been sharing with the world. Your deepest desires take time coming to fruition.

While waiting, it is a challenge to not lose sight of your dreams. That’s hard when there are circumstances (money, time, etc.) or people reinforcing the belief that that they are not possible. Sometimes it requires letting go so that they have room to manifest, other times it means not giving up, taking actions that help your dream manifest.

The power of the August 21st 2017 Total Solar Eclipse is all about opening your heart, and with your heart open consciously activating what your soul has vowed to experience in this life. Your soul vows are in essence your dreams, what you desire to offer, experience, commit to and feel in this life. You can activate your dreams at any time but all the energy of the cosmos is focused on this now and into the next two years. You have super powered support!

Step One – Get clear on what it is you want!

Part of getting clear is moving other peoples, dreams, expectations and judgement out of your space. It could be a loved one, co-worker, group you spend time with or broader social belief system. The collective doubt, your own experiences and people in your life who have fear or lack of permission to live fulfilled, block your vibrational alignment with your dreams. Take time to clear them out (link to Own Your Space).

I’ve been in the process of buying my next home for the past year. In the beginning of my process, I had to lovingly release the disappointment of my friends that I was moving away from them. Toward the end I had to work extensively on clearing out the fears and control of the property seller. All along I had to face my parents desires to keep me close and return to the clarity about my own needs in balance with my family’s needs.

Step Two – Claim your power to manifest!

Your intentions make a difference. When it comes to calling in your dreams, your attention is required. To manifest your desires, choose to believe they are in reach even if you can’t explain how. The key word here is “choose”. Your beliefs are your choice.

The energies of creation and manifestation work hand-in-hand with your emotions. This isn’t to say having moments of disappointment, anger or doubt ruin your chances. But it means that when you are taking creation-manifestation action pick times when you feel bright, hopeful, excited, optimistic, or in the flow, so that what you attract to your dreams matches that energy! (link to Manifestation Tips)

In buying my new home, I had moments of impatience, frustration, discouragement that it was taking so long and disappointment when I didn’t get the first property I made an offer on. But when I picked out properties to look at with my real estate agent, when I spent time writing in my vision journal I named “Dream It Alive,” and when I asked my guides/angels for support, I surrendered those emotions and chose to focus on the feelings I desire to experience in my new home.

Step Three – Be flexible!

What you desire is possible, it just may show up in a different form than you had in mind. To manifest your dreams, you need to give the universe room for creative solutions.

I was looking for my next home for over a year and wasn’t seeing the type of house that appealed to me. No one had created it yet, at least within my price range. When I let go of the home coming in the form I had imagined and realized I needed to create that house, I got to focus on the land and location for my next home. Allowing the universe this room to manifest I found a match and felt aligned making the purchase of property that didn’t have my dream house on it. I wanted and got an old barn, land that I loved and some acreage with water rights. Now I get to create the house that matches my vision in a community that feels right for me.

Step Four – Commit to your heart!

There is massive power in commitment. If it wasn’t so, commitments wouldn’t be so scary and thrilling to make! This Total Solar Eclipse is in support of commitments you’ve made with other souls and to yourself. It super powers your vows to whatever you choose to be conscious of creating in your life. So now is the time to do it. When you shine the light of consciousness on your relationships, home, career, life purpose you claim your power to create the life you want. Vow to yourself to bring your heart’s desires into the light and activate them this month! The cosmos and I will be cheering you on!

Before you were born your soul vowed to fulfill your purpose for this lifetime. It included plans to seek certain experiences, gain new awareness and complete some karma. You made promises to other souls to reunite for fulfillment of your commitments.

You may have vowed that you would heal pain from a past-life conflict in this life so you have revisited it to resolve or release its power over you. You may have had a great love with a soul and vowed to continue it in another lifetime. Now you are here living! What your soul committed to before entering this body may not be what you want to do.

What if you are ready to change or let go of those vows? What if you want to make some new commitments? How do you do it without the old vow continuing to pull you back to the original plan? The old vows need to be released to make room for the new ones. When you approach your soul’s vows consciously, it shifts what you call-in to experience in your day-to-day and the big picture of your life.

The astrological energy leading up to the Solar Eclipse on August 21st 2017 is focused on ending, updating and creating new vows. That means it is a potent time to work with your vows while supported by the universe.

There are 3-steps to prepare to update soul vows. They also support your intuitive clarity:

Clean Out Your Aura

Align to Your Higher Self (soul essence)

Fill-in with Intentional Energy

Once you have taken the 3 steps preparing for clarity, take time to write down or think through what vows you have made to in your relationships, your body, your home, your work, your economic experience, your sense of purpose. Then ask yourself, “Is this commitment in alignment with who I am now? Is this vow needing change or is it great as-is?” You may feel the response in your body, a softening or a tightening of the belly. Listen.

With that information, notice the vows that create a tightening in your body or that you know are not in-alignment with your present or desired soul experience. Scan for what is out of alignment, toss some options to your soul Self and see which bring a softening to your belly (3rd chakra).

Ask yourself, “Does this agreement feel balanced? Does this vow honor my higher self? What does it feel like if I give myself permission to let it go? To change it? Am I complete with this commitment?”

Where vows are shifting with your Self, there is both the spiritual aspect and the physical action. Spiritually you can call on your higher self to update these vows. I will go into depth on this in a short course starting in June (click here for course info).

Soul vows are a choice, conscious or unconscious. A commitment that you need to refresh/keep current regularly, even in the best of times, so they don’t become stale, outdated or even harmful. Take advantage of this magical time to support the reset of your vows leading up to the Solar Eclipse of August 21st 2017.

I often get into conversations with parents of sensitive kids who don’t know how to help. They were never given the tools to manage their own sensitivity or they don’t have the same sort of sensitivity. I was a sensitive kid.

Some people are simply born with more sensitivity to the energies around them. They have natural empathy, feeling what others feel. And frequently get drained, overstimulated or emotional in response to their surroundings. They don’t yet know how to recognize when what they are feeling is not their feelings, or how to create healthy boundaries. Sensitivity has two main roots:

Nature

Trauma

Trauma based sensitivity is a result of conditioning. Many highly sensitive people had childhood trauma. Their sense of safety required heightened alertness, “reading” people in order to minimize abuse or manage stress. A survival skill to navigate home life or societal traumas such as war.

I’ve recently identified a new branch on the trauma root that previous generations did not experience. Sensitive children conditioned by the stress of over stimulation. Constant stimulation has particularly deep impact on developing minds.

What we experience in childhood sets the baseline for normal throughout life. Trauma that heightens sensitivity doesn’t have to be first hand. Frequent exposure to unpredictable violence through the media can traumatize a child. Make them feel unsafe at school or other environments where a sense of safety was previously the norm. How a child learns to manage it shapes their life forever.

My parents were sensitive too. Like most of us they were taught or found ways to suppress their sensitivity when it got too uncomfortable. There are a lot of ways we suppress sensitivity:

Substances that alter our state of sensitivity, from coffee to alcohol or pharmaceuticals

Checking-out, habits that detach us from feeling, TV, internet, video games

Staying busy, not allowing enough time to process experiences

Eating for comfort

Using the mind to deny what one senses

Now that you understand a bit more about the roots of sensitivity and how it is typically suppressed, what can you do to help yourself or your sensitive child?

The first step is to shift from thinking sensitivity is bad. Sensitivity is heightened awareness. It is a skill. Even a gift when we get comfortable with it. Getting comfortable with it is the tricky part.

Second, you learn to notice when it’s happening and identify it as something you are experiencing in response to your environment rather than your own emotions or thoughts. To do this ask yourself or ask your child to ask themselves a few questions:

What do I feel? Is it “my” feeling? Is it something I feel around me? What or who around me is feeling like this?

This begins the process of getting clear on what you sense that is your energy and what isn’t your energy that you feel in your environment.

Once you know that something you feel is not yours, you are free to consciously give your Self space from it. You can do this by visualizing the emotion, thought or physical sensation moving into a rose or a pretty rock. Somewhere separate from your body. As you are practicing you might want to have a clean-out rock or crystal that you use for this and periodically soak it in water with Epsom salts to clear the energy.

Over time your awareness of the sources of your sensitivity becomes clearer and your ability to separate from the energy that isn’t yours is a habit. Then you will experience your sensitivity as a tool or a gift to help you navigate life.

The magic of sensitivity is revealed when you are not suppressing it, turning it off or denying it but can see it as valuable information. Then you are free to apply the understanding to your choices in a given situation.

It was the hardest winter in the sixty-plus year history of our family ranch. Record rains, snow and freezing weather many times from December through early March. The extremely abnormal weather put a big stress on the pregnant mama cow’s right at the time they were ready to give birth.

We had several cows with newborns that needed a stay at “Hotel Corral” where they had shelter, extra hay and room service (high protein grass pellets) delivered in the morning by yours truly. We had four calves who lost their mothers from complications pre-or-post birth and a young first-calf heifer who we had to help give birth, pulling the calf as she pushed. Its head was too big and both could have died. Thankfully they are doing great now.

I helped bottle feed the calves, massage them, encourage them to walk and love them. Being in close relationship, I began to recognize the unique soul signature of each calf, cow or bull just like I see my dog and humans.

It was emotionally hard to witness them suffer, while doing all we could to help. It brought up a lot of questions for me. I’ve always felt good about the way our family raises cattle organically, the old-fashioned way. Lots of room to roam, graze and in winter hay cut from our own non-chemically treated fields.

Now I was asking myself uncomfortable questions. What is my relationship with eating meat? How did humans become so detached from the source of their food? And what is my soul agreement with each of the calves who I know are being raised to be someone’s dinner in a couple of years?

Hard realities for a cattle rancher’s daughter to look at after being away from it for 25 years. I bonded and had a soulful relationship with each of these calves. My soul agreement was to love them and care for them while learning the signs of health and illness. These vulnerable orphans taught me about bonding, showed me what their souls were interested in experiencing by being born as a cow or bull, and helped me surrender, what is out of my control, a little more.

I used my energy tools to give healing to each of the calves and their mamas. I became particularly attached to a calf I named Teardrop, whose mom died when he was four days old. On his white face, he had a little black teardrop mark by his right eye (he’s pictured in this post).

It is a rare occurrence to have a bottle-fed-calf at our ranch. We aren’t set-up for it long-term. So Dad ran an ad on craigslist to find someone interested in bottle calves, typically it’s a 4H kid. I prayed that whoever would come for the bottle calves would give them a good home.

The next day a couple came out to take a look at Teardrop and decided to take his buddy too. They have a big cattle ranch in Montana (not a feed lot) with mother cows who had lost calves. They planned to match these calves up with new mamas, using the method my grandpa used long ago to get the mother cows to accept a calf that isn’t their own.

While I know, their ultimate fate hasn’t improved, this is the best possible scenario for the days they get to enjoy being a soul in a calf’s body. As I explore my soul agreements with animals and that responsibility, I am learning from my ranch experiences that even if my encounter is brief, I have an opportunity to honor each unique soul and offer love.

I like to say, the reason it’s important to include, “until death do we part,” in marital vows, is that you want the soul contract of marriage to end at the physical bodies death. As much as you love each other, you may or may not choose to come back together in another lifetime.

Relationship soul agreements are commitments you make to another person that last beyond your body’s lifespan. Love, romance, sensual steamy desire for another and elation when you are with the beloved is one of the primary drivers in our soul experience.

Connection with the beloved, when at its climax, feels like your soul’s reason for being. We all want to feel in love, to be in love, to feel loved, to feel seen, to be cherished by our beloved, and desired. To feel alive in the presence of the other.

Then why is love so hard? Why do long-term relationships seem to be more about working stuff out, tolerance, and compromise, then being turned on? And why are short-term relationships often so fraught with misunderstanding?

I believe it is because, through the power of love, you are fulfilling your soul agreements.

Beyond the hormones, mental and emotional attraction to partnership, there is this deep river of your soul’s drive to resolve unresolved experiences, or complete incomplete agreements. Unresolved or incomplete experiences are created by both positive, ecstatic love connection, and not so positive, painful interactions.

You come back together in your relationship soul agreements to either recreate an amazing feeling you want to experience again, or to resolve the old karma of a painful or traumatic experience. Maybe both.

For example, you may feel strongly that you are meant to be with someone who doesn’t feel the same for you. You have an unresolved soul agreement with them. One they are choosing not to show up for in this lifetime. Or you may feel compelled to stay in an abusive relationship because of your past life together. Karma that keeps you feeling you have a debt to pay or aren’t free to leave.

Our souls create relationship agreements both consciously and unconsciously. Marriage is a conscious agreement. But what type of soul agreement is created through physical intimacy? While science has some interesting things to say about love, there is little acknowledgment given to the soul’s experience of sexual connection.

Both partners enter with their own beliefs and soul agreements to play out. Is the intimacy a new celebration of what’s possible or is it revisiting an old soul agreement? The impact of merging energy goes beyond the mind, emotions and body.

Seeking consciousness of your relationship soul agreements and directly communicating what they mean to you with your lover is the best way to create positive love connections. It is vulnerable but powerful. It helps you avoid going down a painfully familiar path and unconsciously recreating repeat experiences. Experiences that may create more of the pain they were trying to heal.

You have the power to update, change or end your relationship soul agreements. The more you release of the souls unresolved experiences with your beloved the more joy is possible in the present. You stop working out old karma and start enjoying the moment.

Here’s a free guided meditation I made to help you update your soul agreements: Download

Throughout my life, I have often been a grounding support for those around me. In business, friendships, with lovers and family. While being grounded comes naturally, it has been an ongoing lesson to learn healthy energy exchange when helping someone I love through a rough spot. If you find yourself helping others too, you may relate to how it can throw your energy off balance.

Early in life, I learned through experience, that I had to help others around me be grounded and give them some of my energy so they could be available to care for my needs.

Grounding for someone meant I would give a part of my foundation (root chakra) to help them stabilize. Letting someone tap into my energy (solar plexus chakra) meant I would feel depleted and find myself spending time on things that weren’t important to me but made them feel better.

Later in life I learned that it wasn’t healthy to have others ground through me or tap into my energy. I learned to set my space and psychically show the person a grounding cord near their root chakra that they could have. rather than grounding through me. When aware of a cord into my energy, I would detach the energy cord from my solar plexus chakra and attach it to the Divine (God). These are loving tools.

My work with these tools and beliefs has helped me have better boundaries in helping others. And yet there was an aspect of my belief about helping others that wasn’t working for me anymore. It didn’t acknowledge the healthy way to help others ground and share my energy. And healthy reasons to do so.

My perception of what’s healthy or what works for me is shifting, or perhaps I’m just seeing it with a new level of clarity. With my sense of self-care solid from the healthier energetic boundaries, now I see that I can help others without losing my equilibrium. In fact, I have been and they don’t need to ground through me or take my energy.

I see it like holding a child’s bike seat lightly while they learn to balance. The child is pedaling forward and they are learning. They just need a little help to stabilize their momentum so they can get confident in their ability to ride.

This type of energy sharing support is short-term, like training-wheels, and does not get in the way of self-responsibility. On the other end of the spectrum is co-dependent help. Control that gets something out of being needed and doesn’t want to let go of the bike. A steadying hand does not steer the bike. It is the compassion, strength, stability we all need when the world gets rocky.

Giving of yourself by steadying a loved one’s balance until they can do it for themselves works when the energy exchange is reciprocal over time. In this way, they can remember how it feels and how to access it. This is grace, kindness, healthy help.

Healthy grounding and energy comes from the heart chakra rather than the root chakra or solar plexus. It is more than showing someone a tool. It’s actually assisting them with the experience during a challenging time (loss, trauma, change, life disruption). Allowing them to regain their equilibrium, without being sucked into additional suffering.

There is always a time for healthy help delivered with boundaries, love, kindness and compassion. The difference between grounding FOR someone and SUPPORTING someone so they can re-ground is a massively different energy exchange for both people involved. It holds your loved one lightly so they stay balanced and don’t fall farther out of touch with themselves. You can do this type of giving while staying balanced and empowered.

Soul agreements are equally dark and light. The karma created between an abusive person and their victim. Two warriors fighting in a battle. A parent who did not want their child and the unwanted child. Lies, betrayal, control, neglect, inflicting pain on another, these happen every day and create karma in relationships.

Call it karmic debt or unresolved past experiences, the shadow side of soul agreements may have even more impact on your life than the light. Why? Because the wounds, incomplete business and unresolved experiences, leave a signature in your energy field that attract more of that energy until it is resolved or released from your soul records.

The shadow side of a soul agreement can be a simple as someone stealing your wallet. The thief creates an unresolved karmic debt, by taking what isn’t theirs. The injury to your sense of safety or power can mark your energy field in a way that calls-in other similar experiences. Like attracts like. Whether your energy is stolen or an object is stolen.

You may mentally and emotionally process the experience to heal, yet find that the unresolved trauma in your energy field continues to attract thieves or energy vampires. Both the karma with the thief and the soul memory need to be cleared, to reclaim your power.

In the realm of what your soul remembers but your mind does not, you carry layers of unresolved experiences. Here’s example of a shadow soul agreement that shows up as a daily challenge.

You work with a person who pretends to support your success but continuously undermines it behind your back. Through words that plant doubtful seeds with management, they poison your opportunities for advancement while smiling to your face and bringing you a birthday card. They have felt familiar to you from your first meeting and you experience conflicting sensations of love and hate toward them.

It maybe more than insecurity or competition that is at play. You have a soul agreement with this co-worker. What would you have “agreed” to in a prior life together that results in this behavior?

You may have agreed to show up to remind each other to own your power and this person is pushing you to own your power by challenging it. You may have had an unresolved conflict in a past life where you were competing for attention from parents or a lover, and they didn’t get the attention they needed, so they continue to compete with you. You may have undermined their power in a past life, so they are now retaliating to undermine your power.

You’ve participated in creating shadow soul agreements too. Whether intentional, unconscious, or accidental, these unresolved energies between souls outlast lifetimes, repeating the patterns in new experiences. You will recreate an experience in a different form until you learn the lesson it has for you.

Changing your habits, mental and emotional patterns are a big part creating new experiences. But releasing the energetic charge from the soul memory and updating your soul agreements set you free to complete the lesson.

Whether past life or present, shadow soul agreements are an opportunity to heal both the isolated incident and the layers of karma our soul carries with it in the present. You don’t have to keep repeating the lesson when you claim your power to release unresolved soul agreements.

Meditation is a pathway to strong intuition and inner-peace. You don’t need to sit with your eyes closed to meditate. I’m an active person and need to move my body. Walking meditation is the way that I have been able to more consistently commit to meditation and insure I regularly set my energy to my truth. In this video I share with you the steps I take to clear out and reset my energy field with walking meditation.

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"Natalie has a grounded and loving way of guiding you to greater self-knowledge that assists you on your soul's journey. I experience profound 'ah-ha' moments during and after our sessions, as well as noticeable energetic shifts resulting in deeper peace and joy. She delivers spiritual insights and information with humor, kindness and compassion." -Jennifer